Short stories

[mawombat.livejournal.com]

is it really terrible just to be writing a series of short stories? or should I ditch that and go for the novel?

Comments

[wfeather.livejournal.com]

I'm doing the same thing, just like last year: an anthology of erotica. There are certainly some advantages to an anthology, such as being able to scrap a story if it isn't working out, and being able to write multiple stories simultaneously (and in multiple locations, such as one story on the home laptop and one story on the work laptop). I think the best thing, however, is to keep all the stories to a similar theme or genre.

[blueveinwrists.livejournal.com]

My "novel" is closely resembling an anthology of erotica right now...

[blueveinwrists.livejournal.com]

I keep considering this, I've always been a lot better at writing poetry/short stories than anything longer. But I'm getting sort of attached to my characters now, & better at having different things going on within the same story. Ooh, learning!
I don't think it's terrible. Maybe it is a bit of a cop out, but writing 50,000 words in 30 days is something a lot of people aren't going to do, so it's still impressive & definetely worth doing.

[temujin-gk.livejournal.com]

I'm doing a series of shorts too. The way I'm doing it is that I'm following character A & B with one plot and then character C, who is periphery to A & B's story, will switch to become the protagonist for the next story. And then a side character from C's story will jump into to being the next. Basically how I'm going to work it is that all my shorts are interconnected but are still separate stories.

[blueveinwrists.livejournal.com]

I love this idea!

[temujin-gk.livejournal.com]

It only came to me two nights ago when I realized that my current plot idea wasn't going to carry me through the word count--that and I fell in love with a random side character I had thrown in there. We'll see how it goes.

[mawombat.livejournal.com]

that is a great idea. I thought of something similar (yet much less complex), but approached it as if from a novel structure. I never thought about it pertaining to a series of short stories. That's great!

[temujin-gk.livejournal.com]

I've always thought I was much better at writing short stories than full length novels as most of my formal training is in short stories--so I'm kind of bending this challenge to fit my strengths. I'm crossing my fingers so that it'll work.

[wardrobewitch.livejournal.com]

I'm doing a series of short stories as I have never attempted to write a novel length story before now.

Good luck in whatever you decide to do.

[jarethrake.livejournal.com]

I do have a novel (72,000 words!) but it took me three years or so to write. I'm doing short stories this year too.

There's one I'm very pleased with. It's a story about a perfectly normal, middle class couple who have a baby which turns out to have inherited vampirism from his grandfather, and how his father comes to terms with having a vampiric son. It's a children's story, and probably a wonderful metaphor about mixed race children or something. Best thing is, it came into my head with illustrations, which I am having to describe in great detail. A picture isn't quite a thousand words, but it's at least two hundred and fifty.:D

[pomkeygeekange.livejournal.com]

Last time I managed nanowrimo It was the same characters and each chapter ended up being like a short story. I also did the same event from 2 characters point of views which helped to.

[ladymalen.livejournal.com]

Keep in mind that Nano was started to try to get people to not over think/over rule themselves into not writing. The idea is just to write! and not hem yourself in so much you lose your creativity and motivation. If short stories are what's working, run with it.

[sesheta-66.livejournal.com]

Write whatever motivates you most.

[lady-match.livejournal.com]

I'm doing short stories as well, only because I end up getting bored if I'm writing the on the same story day in and day out. This way I can switch back and forth between stories and keep my motivation going. I think as long as it works for you, and you're reaching your goal of what you want then I say stick with the short stories.

[joshuwain.livejournal.com]

Well, a few years back I interviewed Chris Baty for a local newspaper. His take on short stories was that they were fine as long as they really made up a larger story: each tale contributing to an overall, larger narrative.

It's really up to yourself, though: you're competing with you. :)

[apotropaios.livejournal.com]

The world's worst linking sections will make a collection of short stories into a novel.

Eight children sit round a fire. Conventiently, they are named a through to h, each one tells a story one by one. Say which one is telling the story before each short story, and there you are - one complete novel.

[discipuladc.livejournal.com]

I was going to call it Canterbury Tales, but yes, a wrap-around story can tie them into one narrative.

[mechanicaltears.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you posted this.

When NaNo started this year, I was in the middle of a short story. I knew that I wanted it to be a short story and I already had the beginning, ending, and most of the middle worked out. I didn't want to stop writing it so that I could take up a longer story for the NaNo, so I'm just going with it for now (although it's already ended up a bit longer than I first thought it would, heh). I figure that, once this one's finished, I'll just write another short story set in the same time period (my story's a futuristic sci-fi one), but probably with different characters. I figure that I've already established the world I'm writing about, so it should be *too* difficult to throw another character into it and see what happens. *shrugs*

[technicolornina.livejournal.com]

Nope, I'm doing something very similar - if you've ever heard of the "100 fanfictions" challenges, I'm doing the 5Ds 100, but I'm doing it all in a single universe, so when I'm done the stories can be strung together into one. Last year I got 3000 words in and gave up, so this is much more productive ^^ I've already beaten my first-year wordcount!

[pernwebgoddess.livejournal.com]

It's fine. There's no official rule one way or the other, but if you were to ask me in the rules forum, I would say that there should probably be something linking them together into one whole work. After all, it's not National Write 50k month, it's national NOVEL writing month.

And you do find short story collections right alongside regular novels in the bookstore. So as far as I'm concerned, it's fine by me.